GameCentral takes a look back at the best iOS and Android games of the last 12 months, from Destiny: Rising to The Valley Of The Architects.
It’s been quite a year for mobile gamers, a category that increasingly seems to include just about everyone over the age of 11. From the subaquatic fun of Feed The Deep and the touchscreen version of Subnautica, to delightfully eerie freebie The Mr Rabbit Magic Show, there’s rarely been a better time to seek momentary distraction via your phone.
Super Farming Boy
iOS, £7.99 (LemonChilli Soft)
It may have had a remaining bug or two at launch, but those have now been weeded out, making Super Farming Boy’s enjoyably unusual take on agriculture a distinct pleasure.
Each crop you plant has its own harvesting technique and direction, letting you place different vegetables next to each other to trigger increasingly complex combos once they’ve ripened. There’s a lot to remember, and everything takes place against the clock, so it’s far from relaxing to play.
When night comes ‘the man’ turns up in your dreams to buy your produce and sell you new tools, slowly opening up the gameplay as you move from subsistence to cash farming in this skill based and tactical game.
Score: 8/10
The Valley Of The Architects
iOS, £3.99 (Whaleo)
The only architecture you’ll see in Valley Of The Architects is lifts, which you need to use to move a queue of residents to their specific destinations. The twist is that all the lifts move on their own, making the route and timing of each passenger’s journey essential to getting them to the right place.
Although lifts are autonomous, you can place stoppers, which they bounce off when they hit a specific floor. By timing lifts’ motion and bounces with the paths of passengers, you can ensure each one gets to the right place by the time each level has run its course.
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While it does require a modicum of trial and error it’s a fascinating process, the game’s interface and generally minimalist design helping you focus on what counts.
Score: 8/10
Crashlands 2
iOS, £9.99 (Butterscotch Shenanigans)
Set on a brightly coloured alien planet, Crashlands is a game of crafting and exploration, where your principle task is to smash absolutely everything in sight, in a bid to break it down into useful components.
Its sequel is at least as polished and takes an identical course, which includes meeting friendly aliens and slaughtering their inhospitable counterparts, a process made easier as you upgrade your spacesuit and equipment.
Conversations can drag a bit, but it’s a small niggle in an otherwise compelling game that manages to improve on most aspects of the already accomplished first game.
Score: 8/10
The Mr Rabbit Magic Show
iOS & Android, free (Rusty Lake)
As happy birthday messages go, this is unlike any you’ll have come across. It celebrates a decade of independent developer Rusty Lake and their ominous-meets-ethereal house style, in the form of an interactive magic show.
Its story unfolds over 20 separate acts, with regular interludes in the game’s version of the developer’s office space, where you’ll help them party, as well as assisting with debugging the very game you’re playing.
Its puzzles are surreal rather the cryptic and prove intrinsically enjoyable, their style and offbeat character making them a pleasure to explore, especially if you’re a fan of their canon – if you’re not, this is an excellent invitation to find out more.
Score: 8/10
No Way Home
iOS, free – full game £4.99 (SMG Studios)
Games originally designed with a mouse or controller in mind often don’t work all that well on the confines of a mobile screen, but despite being ported from PC, No Way Home is not like that, managing to play brilliantly without any need for Bluetooth peripherals.
Stranded lightyears from Earth, you need to find a way back – a process that involves blasting your way through legions of extraterrestrials, while gradually upgrading your ship and its armaments.
Its conversations are amusing, space battles are fast and fun, and the extra weapons you acquire look and sound satisfyingly devastating.
Score: 8/10
Feed The Deep
iOS, free – full game £6.99 (Luke Muscat)
In Feed The Deep you’re a diver in search of extremely big underwater prey, the sub-aqua behemoths you hunt only being found at the end of labyrinthine, flooded 2D cave systems.
Earning extra air tanks, faster flippers, and heavier load carrying capabilities lets you hoist more treasures to the surface, which in turn lead to better upgrades, all of which you’ll need to track down later beasts, who can be hidden very deep underwater.
There are hidden secrets and more puzzles elements as you progress, in this decidedly unconventional fishing simulator.
Score: 8/10
Subnautica
iOS & Android, £8.99 (Playdigious)
Crash landing on a watery planet, your first order of business is survival. Nibbling on edible sea creatures, and chipping off mineral deposits for crafting, you slowly start to eke out an existence on a mostly submerged, very alien world.
Upgrading your gear gives access to the nether reaches of its ocean, where rarer materials await, letting you construct more advanced technology and better underwater bases, while avoiding unfriendly sub-aquatic fauna.
Moving about in water actually lends itself surprisingly well to the slower pace of touchscreen controls, making this port feel right at home on mobile, especially on iPad where its impressive alien vistas have more room.
Score: 8/10
Destiny: Rising
iOS & Android, free (NetEase)
With Destiny’s console and PC players increasingly disaffected with its direction, a shift to mobile at least hedges the franchise’s bets in an uncertain future. Although an already restless player-base may have had initial concerns about the addition of gacha heroes and multiple currencies, redolent of the worst of touchscreen gaming.
Luckily, Destiny: Rising also gets a lot of things right, most centrally the rock solid gunplay for which the Bungie original is justly famed. It’s also relatively generous with its unlocks and not quite as prone to excessive grind as some of its competitors.
It may indeed prove quite tempting to drop real cash into its effectively bottomless pit, but that’s also a testament to the addictive qualities that remain as strong as its console counterpart’s used to be.
Score: 8/10
Maze Mice
iOS & Android, £4.99 (Trampoline Tales) – out 10 October
Vampire Survivor-inspired games (see below) are not exactly a rarity these days, which is understandable given the runaway success of the original game. Maze Mice goes a lot further though, by splicing familiar swarm control with Pac-Man style mazes and Superhot’s conceit of enemies that only move when you do.
For the rest of the time, the game’s effectively paused, giving you the space to think about where to go and what to do next. That’s useful because enemies have quite different trajectories – some of them casually ignoring walls – and the mazes you unlock as you progress require completely different tactics for success.
It’s a spectacularly subtle hidden gem of the iOS and Google Play Stores, with a strategic depth that belies its simple graphics and apparently derivative design, its true nature only gradually revealing itself as you open up more of its mazes and mice.
Score: 8/10
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor
iOS & Android, free – full game £8.99 (Ghost Ship Games)
Like Deep Rock Galactic, your dwarf is contractually obliged to extract a set of minerals from each of its subterranean levels, and like Vampire Survivors you do that from a top-down perspective while defending yourself against swarms of inbound enemies.
No premium indie game would be complete without a roguelite structure, that lets you very slowly improve everything from the radius within which you can pick up items to the speed you run and mine.
Enemies change as you go deeper into new zones, as do the minerals and weapons you pick up, with the drip feed of additional power creating a steady and engrossing sense of progression.
Score: 8/10
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